Richmond's Winter Project

[richmond62]

Over the next few months I shall be building an OXT Lite program to allow end-users to input text in Ge'ez: the ancient, classical Ethiopian language used in extant Jewish texts such as the Books of Enoch, and Jubilees.

https://archive.org/details/EthiopicBoo ... 7/mode/2up
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For this you will NOT need to know the language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%CA%BDez

But you will need to understand something of the way an abugida works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%CA%BDez_script

as well as access to a unicode compliant Ge'ez font:

https://github.com/geezorg/legally-free-geez-fonts

I shall use: AbyssinicaSIL-Regular

Although I should state that I disapprove of SIL's activities (especially in Papua New Guinea), one does have to admit their fonts rock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_International

You will also need these Unicode charts to understand the Unicode address of the glyphs of the Ge'ez abugida.

https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1200.pdf

[richmond62]

An alphabetic system has individual symbols and/or digraphs for individual consonants and vowels.

An abugida system normally contains symbols that consist of a consonant with an inherent vowel sound.

The English variant of the Latin alphabet only consists of alphabetic symbols.

The Bulgarian variant of the Cyrillic 'alphabet' contains both alphabetic symbols and abugida symbols.

The Devanagari writing system used for Hindi consists of abugida symbols.

The Ge'ez script for classical Ethiopic texts consists of abugida symbols amounting to a vast number of glyphs: something that makes
life relatively difficult for computer keyboard input, as it is extremely clumsy to assign many levels of keyboard levels (via dead keys)
with one key combination for each abugida symbol (e.g. SHIFT-ALT-CTRL-Q for glyph Hex 1310).

In terms of usability it is much more practical if one can build a abugida symbol cumulatively: Unicode Hex 1310 is the Ge'ez glyph for 'GWA'
so it has to be easier for end-users to type G+W+a and the interface to deliver Hex 1310.

This is something that OXT lends itself to extremely well.

[richmond62]

So: to get started with actual programming, here's a 2-card stack that we can use as our template to build our program with:
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Title.jpg (239.68 KiB) Viewed 367 times

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ACTION.jpg (236.48 KiB) Viewed 367 times

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You will find that I have already added action 'buttons' to navigate between these 2 cards.

There are NOT buttons, but snapshots of buttons (images) to guarantee cross-platform consistency.

[richmond62]

Before we proceed any further please:

1. Install the Ge'ez font in your system.

2. Download the stack and 'play' with it.

3. Either print out, or in some other way make sure you have access to the Ethiopic Unicode chart.

[richmond62]

It is a good idea to "get your head around" the basic consonantal glyphs:
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Geez_annotated.png (118.54 KiB) Viewed 366 times

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I apologise for those of you who are not cognisant with modern Hebrew, but I have written (in blue) an ALEF and an AIN as those vowels cannot really be adequately represented using some sort of Latinate letter (and I should add that my use of 2 modern Hebrew letters in no way demonstartes support for the Modern state of Israel, Hamas, or Hezbollah).

It is not really necessary to learn the numerical forms, although we will try to integrate them into our program.
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geez_numbers.gif (9.95 KiB) Viewed 364 times

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HOWEVER, I will have to hack that font come the time as it does NOT contain Ethiopic numerical glyphs in the Unicode allotted paces.

[richmond62]

Here are the basic consonantals with their Unicode addresses which I have converted from Hexadecimal into Decimal:
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Geez_Unicodes.png (279.32 KiB) Viewed 358 times

[richmond62]

Now we can use my Key Generator stack to generate Key Buttons:
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KeyGenerator.png (150.96 KiB) Viewed 358 times

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Screenshot 2024-09-28 at 16.18.54.png (149.99 KiB) Viewed 358 times

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Screenshot 2024-09-28 at 16.21.00.png (144.83 KiB) Viewed 358 times

[richmond62]

Now you can CUT that 'button' and place it on the keyboard map on the Main stack:
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Screenshot 2024-09-28 at 16.25.39.png (1.18 MiB) Viewed 357 times

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Now you will require 2 fields called "fBUILDER" and "fOUTPUT" respectively.
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Screenshot 2024-09-28 at 16.30.06.png (958.7 KiB) Viewed 357 times

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Let's add some code to our 'button':
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Screenshot 2024-09-28 at 16.38.04.png (964.88 KiB) Viewed 356 times

[richmond62]

Now clever people, instead of being lazy and waiting for me, can generate all the other consonantals and put them in place.

[richmond62]

Geez_AfroAsiatic.png (236.46 KiB) Viewed 336 times

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For consonantal entry you'll need 'buttons' for all the signs in this table except for the 'Alif' and the 'Ayin' (shaded in orange) [people who are familiar with Afro-Asiatic languages (previously called 'Semitic') will recognise these as what might be best termed 'vowel place markers'].
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Arabic.png (9.27 KiB) Viewed 333 times

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Arabic alif and ayn.
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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 10.54.10.png (85.83 KiB) Viewed 335 times

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[richmond62]

stack2.jpg (235.19 KiB) Viewed 334 times

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[richmond62]

Before we go any further let's add some code to the ' ሀ' button (so we can repeat this script across all our base consonantal glyphs), so end-users are prompted when their mouse is over the button:
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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 11.56.27.png (668.96 KiB) Viewed 329 times

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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 12.00.05.png (128.2 KiB) Viewed 329 times

[richmond62]

Placing the buttons is a relatively easy process (although a bit boring):
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Now if, like me, you are ever so slightly unsure of the phonetic values of those "funny" letters it would seem a good idea to have
a built-in system to report them.

So let's place a field here:
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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 12.20.36.png (178.97 KiB) Viewed 327 times

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This is where we can display the phonetic values of each Ethiopic glyph.
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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 12.23.51.jpg (259.58 KiB) Viewed 326 times

[richmond62]

We can now copy the script from button 'ሀ' to all the other buttons, ONLY adjusting the value for the phonetic transcription field.
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I used Shapecatcher to find the Unicode values for transcription letters with diacritics:

https://shapecatcher.com/
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This is a wonderful resource I cannot recommend too strongly.

[richmond62]

Let's have a CLEAR button in case we make a mistake:
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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 12.59.42.jpg (257.75 KiB) Viewed 321 times

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So: To Summarise . . .

We have built something that allows us to enter single Ethiopic base consonantal glyphs into a field called 'fBUILDER".

[richmond62]

As we are going to CONSTRUCT consonantal clusters like this:
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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 13.26.55.png (42.02 KiB) Viewed 317 times

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We might like to modify the scripts in all our input buttons:
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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 13.44.50.png (382.79 KiB) Viewed 315 times

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Screenshot 2024-09-29 at 13.44.17.jpg (177.31 KiB) Viewed 315 times

[richmond62]

Here is the source stack so far.

[richmond62]

Now we need to provide buttons for the Labio-velar variant consonantals:
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Labials.jpg (99.68 KiB) Viewed 312 times

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LabioVelars_Unicode.png (158.79 KiB) Viewed 312 times

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KW.jpg (159.02 KiB) Viewed 311 times

[richmond62]

Making a program of this sort is a long drawn-out process, and, as you should have worked out from the way buttons use repetitive code, a fairly tedious process that involves a lot of cutting and pasting of code. I have used for many years a series of gamepads on the left side of my keyboard to minimise repetitive stress injury and write-pronation:
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Z26572_166558.png (108.66 KiB) Viewed 308 times

[richmond62]

We also need to consider Ethiopic punctuation symbols:
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The numbers supplied by the Unicode consortium are in Hexadecimal, so, for instance the Hex 1360 is 4960 for those of us who only have 10 fingers.

As I generally work on Macintosh computers I use the Mac built-in calculator to convert Hex into Decimal numbers:
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Ethiopic also features 2 series of number symbols:
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